


Glue

by th_esaurus



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-14 10:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14767727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: The mark and his daemon are Waverly’s mess to clean up now.Illya is theirs.





	Glue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [takingoffmyshoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takingoffmyshoes/gifts).



> i couldn't resist this prompt, even if it's only a little slice of a much larger world.

**dramatis personae**

**Illya** & his daemon Agrafena, a hooded rat.

 **Gaby** & her daemon Lamprecht, a hare.

 **Napoleon** & his daemon Donovan, a coyote.

* * *

 

It’s a simple plan; still, every mission carries a risk.

*

They hear the gunshot, and the thud of Illya’s heavy bulk. Gaby and Napoleon are sequestered low in the burrow, but Lamprecht, his ears flat and his head perked up above the rim - camouflaged in the dusky prairie - jerks bodily at the sight of it. “They’re down,” he hisses unnecessarily. Donovan bares her teeth, silent and tense. Napoleon is quiet too, one hand hovering near his holster, and the other pressed against Donovan’s wiry fur.

It was all calculated. The mark was far too jumpy for a straight meeting - would have fled back to the icy Baltics at the first sign of being considered a turncoat. But Waverly could be pushy when he wanted an informant; back him into a corner, he said, and give me something to blackmail him with.

Illya’s life was _something,_ to be sure.

The plan was this: that Illya, a beast of a KGB agent and not prone to hiding it, would go directly for the mark, ham-fisted and blunt, a Russian threat. The mark, skittish and armed, would thus shoot Illya. A simple plan. They had intelligence that noted he was a voracious consumer of movies, Westerns and gangster flicks, and had never killed a man in his life, and would likely flee after a single shot - that’s how they did it in the pictures, after all.

“How likely?” Donovan had said coldly, and Agrafena hushed her from her usual perch inside Illya’s raised collar.

“She’s not wrong,” Napoleon shrugged, so good at seeming nonchalant. “Exactly how many bullets do you expect to survive?”

“Seven,” Illya snapped, with a tone that belied previous and intimate experience. That shut everyone up. Gaby wanted to ask, and could see Lamprecht’s foot twitching to do the same. Still; still--

The other nugget of intelligence Waverly’s boys had picked up was that this Baltic mark, raised on the echo of old Soviet wives’ tales, believed that sly piece of propaganda that the KGB had no daemons. Or rather, not about their person: witch-trained, people said, in Moscow, sometimes for years, to part vast distances from their daemons for spy work. It was not, people also said, a painless experience.

It had to be Illya, then. He’d nodded, stoic, at the idea of it all, but Gaby noticed Agrafena latch her small, sharp teeth gently on the bottom of Illya’s earlobe - a tick she’d seen before that was perhaps the little rat’s way of calming Illya. An unspoken way to ground him.

A frantic murderer, Waverly smiled, laying out this whole play, was far easier to make a deal with than a man with something left to lose.

*

Simple.

*

Of course there are plenty of places a single shot can kill a man. The heart. The head, the neck. A punctured lung would do him no good. And the sickening thought that a single bullet could rip through Agrafena’s tiny form like it was warm butter, if the mark aimed high, found by accident her hiding place under Illya’s flatcap—

“Did you see where he’s hit?” Gaby whispers, and Lamprecht shakes his head, too far even for his sharp eyes. Napoleon, almost apologetically, puts his big palm over Gaby’s mouth, his every movement slow and careful. He presses a finger to his lips. He is breathing through his nose, Gaby notices, deliberately calm, and she realises she has been panting, nervous. She gets herself in check, annoyed. They aren’t in the clear yet.

It seems like too long a wait until they hear the mark’s slippery footsteps, fleeing through the pebbled dirt. No checks on the body, no safety shots. Amateurish. A professional would have made sure Illya was dead. Napoleon, she knows, will be loud and tetchy about the mark’s cack-handed work, once they’re in the clear.

All as planned, though.

*

The mark and his daemon are Waverly’s mess to clean up now.

Illya is theirs.

*

Donovan reaches him first, her loping stride leaving faint tracks in the dust that they’ll cover before they leave. She snuffles delicately over Illya’s body, her nose an inch above Illya’s jacket and no closer, sniffing for blood. Gaby’s gait is too short to take her anywhere fast, but Lamprecht hangs back with her, jumping ahead and then waiting, anxious, until she catches up. He doesn’t want to see the damage before she does. They must do it together.

It’s a moot point. Donovan calls out, perfectly calm: “It’s fine. Shot in the arm. Clean through.”

Gaby can hear Illya grumble something about _fine, she says_ , and her heart thuds, agonising relief. Lamprecht lurches against her leg, a wheezing breath leaving his lungs. He has always been so theatrical. She’s better at hiding her emotions.

Illya’s voice has such power to affect them both, though: that deep rumble of his, and Agrefena’s quiet, low burr. Both threat and balm, the two of them together.

“Having fun playing dead, Peril?” Napoleon jibes, safe to be loud now. Donovan trots back to his side. Her ears are oddly flat, though. A firm line across her head, her neck pushed out, tense, her bright eyes scanning the horizon, though the mark is long gone--

Something wrong. Illya’s sitting up like there’s a pain in his chest, not his bicep, clutching at his stomach, sickened. He heaves in a breath, far too much effort for a glancing gunshot wound.

It’s Lamprecht who says it, his voice shaky. “Where’s Fenya--?”

Immediately, Napoleon is on his knees, holding Illya up, one hand on his back and the other on his thigh. It’s part support and part restraint; Illya is trying to clamber up, frantic. “Find her,” he barks, all business now. Gaby skids the last few feet, her shoes kicking up dust, and she stumbles down, grabbing Illya’s good shoulder, her palm going to his jaw, that space on his neck where Agrafena nestles so often, comforting, though her hand is no substitute.

“Stay,” she hisses, as though he’s a trained dog. When he’s like this, the clearest orders work wonders. “Stay, you idiot, we’ll bring her to you--”

Gaby presses a kiss to his forehead, and then uses his shoulder to push herself up, trying to negate any gentleness she might’ve shown him. Running again, she and Lamprecht and Donovan form a three-pronged search party, combing the ground for Agrafena’s tiny body. She must have been thrown when Illya fell. His cap, tumbled off to the left, yields nothing but dust, and Gaby swears at it, tosses it back to the ground.

There’s no telling how far she might’ve been flung. The thought that she could be so distant from Illya makes a kind of bile rise in Gaby’s throat.

This mission was always considered--

Moderate risk.

Napoleon, far back, has bound up Illya’s arm and helped him to his feet, stumbling forward, as though his body might be magnetised to Agrafena’s. Gaby remembered uselessly, as a kid, that Lamprecht had always wanted to play hide and seek - no brothers or sisters for their games, and Gaby’s father increasingly occupied with his work - but it was futile every time; Gaby knew where he was instinctively, like a limb. Could find him in the darkest night. Could find him blind.

Donovan, one step ahead, follows the line of Illya’s chest, her nose low to the ground.

“Here,” she says, softly. “Here, I have her.”

“She’s alive?” Lamprecht calls, jittery. Gaby boxes his ears in a panic. He’s too blunt.

“Yes,” Donovan tells them. She never says more than she needs to. It’s Napoleon who can talk circles around them all.

And then she does something that Gaby, later, when she is calm, will consider extraordinarily intimate. In the moment it just seems necessary, but she will think about it when the soft night has fallen and Lamprecht is falling asleep in the cradle of her elbow, and she will shiver.

Donovan leans down to the little lump in the dirt, and, with her tongue, washes Agrafena quite delicately. Gaby has no idea what a coyote’s tongue is like - rough, cat-like? - but she’s so vast compared to Agrafena that even slow, careful licks almost turn the rat’s body right over. Then Donovan cleans her mouth on the bristled fur of her foreleg, and, in a confident, sliding motion, picks up Agrafena between her teeth. Settles her back in the cushion of her mouth. Does not close her teeth but bares them, plenty of breathing space, and trots back towards Illya, smooth and slow.

Gaby watches the handover with her eyes wide. It’s Illya’s right arm that’s been shot through, his dominant one, and his left is shaking; she can’t tell if his fingers just brush Donovan’s chin as she rolls the little rat into his open palm. She gives no indication, if he does.

But, Gaby notices, the tips of Napoleon’s ears are flushed. His face poker-blank. But those ears--

It could just be the sun out here.

“Don’t stare,” Lamprecht hisses, though he’s doing exactly the same.

“I’ll stare if I want,” Gaby snaps back. Pushes her palm between his ears and strokes him roughly, the way he likes.

Gaby, though she barely comes up to Illya’s shoulder, runs back over to help him walk. Napoleon could carry him alone, and probably more easily too, but he just smiles at her effort. One of them on each side, their hands one on top of the other on Illya’s back. Napoleon has Illya’s leather jacket slung neatly over his free arm, like a tailor; his sweat is bleeding through his shirt, blood itself just starting to seep through the bandage near his shoulder. Together, they limp across the dirt.

“Why did you park so far,” Illya bites.

“I’m sure a four-wheel drive parked directly at the meeting point wouldn’t have tipped the mark off in the slightest,” Napoleon replies, breezy.

It’s a mile walk yet, and their progress is slow. Illya keeps Agrafena cradled to his belly. There’s something maternal about it, Gaby thinks. She has always liked seeing the two of them together, especially when they think she’s not watching. Illya’s towering bulk, and Agrafena snuffling little whispers into his ear.

He catches her glance. They both look away in a snap. And then Illya takes in a short breath as if he’s about to say something difficult. It’s another moment or two before he does. “When we were young,” he says, his accent heavier than ever through the effort of walking, “Fenya swore that she would never settle into anything that would not fit in the palm of my hand.”

He tips his palm very gently outwards, to show Gaby how perfectly she fits. Unconscious, yes, but breathing steadily.

“She said I would be able to carry her with me wherever I went. But then my father was taken, and my mother was--”

He has never spoken much of his mother. Gaby, not entirely trustworthy, will press Napoleon on it later. Not now, but later.

“I told her she could make no such promise,” Illya sighs, cupping her back towards his chest. “In Russia, it is not common to stay small. No good for the cold. All wolves and ferrets and foxes.” Anyone glancing at them from afar would assume the same: that Donovan, her thick coat and long legs, belonged with Illya. But then, people always thought Lamprecht was a rabbit, a delicate girl’s daemon, when they noticed that Gaby was pretty. She liked proving people wrong. Perhaps Illya did too.

“It was the only time she got upset with me,” Illya carries on, quiet.

All of them are silent for a long time. Shuffling across the desert.

And then Lamprecht springs forward to Illya’s side, and pushes his head towards Illya’s limp right hand, letting his fingers drag for a split-second in the fur between his ears. Only Gaby knows how soft it is there.

She inhales, very sharply, and Illya almost stumbles under the weight of it. Napoleon has him. They both have him, they and their daemons all--

None of them say anything, and everything they don’t say feels awfully loud.

*

Simple, Waverly said. The mission might have been, yes, but people can be so complicated.

Spies most of all.


End file.
